Is This What They Call Progress??

After about 2 hours worth of downloading 14 or so megabytes (currently being on dialup), and a day of just simply forgetting that I'd downloaded it, I got around to installing Windows Live Messenger. So I figured that I would sit down and rant about it.

Now, before I started using MSN oh, about 2 and a half years ago, I didn't even have it installed. I installed it because some friends of mine from where I was volunteering at the time used it, and didn't have Yahoo! Messenger installed on their PC. (which I was then a devout user of, however due to circumstances which I'm not willing to explain, I no longer partake of it.) I installed it, and didn't really like it that much, but suffered through it because, well, I like to talk to friends!

Since then, MSN Messenger has had it's updates, and I wouldn't say that I *LOVE* it, but I am used to it, and find a few of the features cool and amusing, if not a little bit annoying. I found it even cooler when I started adding smileys/emoticons to it, and playing with the winks and other features such as the Handwriting, which lets you draw pretty pictures to the best of your mousing ability. A few of the features I found to be extremely annoying, such as the inability to send someone an offline message without sending them an email (sorry, but I don't have time to wait for Hotmail to load up on DIALUP when all i wanted to do was send someone a quick hello and to say I would be back later), and, if someone suddenly went offline, the annoying "your message could not be delivered" message, which caused me some grief even when my contacts WERE still displayed as online.

But anyway, I digress. I figured I would download the new messenger and give it a spin, figuring I could always just use the old one if it didn't meet up to my enjoyment. I've always believed that a piece of software should have an enjoyment factor in it, if it's not a pleasure to use, what's the bleeding point in it? If there's bits in it that irritate the user, then the user gets aggravated. Simple enough?

So after spending the 2 and a bit hours downloading Windows Live Messenger, I decided to install it. I thought to myself, I'll install it to a different directory, and then if I don't like it, I can uninstall it or just simply not use it. And that is where I hit a snag. The installer decided to OVERRIDE my previous installation without even giving me a choice of where I wanted to install it. Nice one, Redmond. One UN-point in your favour. Nice to see Microsoft still has it's BORGish attitude. "Where do you want to go today?" becomes "We'll install this here whether you like it or not". It takes about 5 minutes to install, making my poor laptop groan a bit, and making ME wonder what kind of crapware it is also installing.

Now it's installed and the program starts up. Being on dialup it takes about 2 minutes to sign in. Once it signs in, I sort of screw my nose up at it a bit. It looks a bit ugly, but that's probably because I'm using the classic theme on Windows XP for the laptop and not the blue bubbly shit. But hey, if Microsoft actually put a bit of customisation into the display settings and let you change the colour of the bubbly stuff, I'd still be using it. Blue, silver and that olive colour just doesn't cut it. There's also a massive advertisement at the bottom of the messenger window, which makes me hope and pray that StuffPlug hurries up and releases an update so I can get rid of it. I realise that advertising keeps programs such as Messenger free, however, it would be NICE if they gave you an option to not display these ads.

One good point is that Messenger now has Offline Messaging, something which has been in Yahoo! Messenger for at least the last 7 years. Nice to see that it's finally 'got with the times' on that front. Although I've just test sent a message and got the usual "The following message could not be delivered to all recipients". Boo, Hiss. And yes I sent it to someone who is also using the new Messenger. Another UN-point.

Another big annoyance is the inability to send MYSELF an online message. I realise that some of you might say "what's the point in sending yourself an IM message?" Well back in the Yahoo! days, I would send messages to myself to test out the smileys without annoying other people, as well as having myself on my own list, so that I could see when I was online or offline. Although that eventually became obsolete as I was invisible most of the time, anyway. I had hoped Microsoft would have fixed this, but no, I clicked on myself and got redirected yet again to an Explorer window so that I could send myself an email. Why should I have to piss other people off when I want to test things such as smileys to make sure I've set them up properly? That makes UN-point #3. GET WITH THE TIMES!

Other not-so-good points:

1: The display pics are missing in the contact window. All I've got is impersonal looking green and grey dudes. BORING!
2: When a contact changes their status to 'away' or 'out to lunch', it's not displayed as "(Away)", just as a time clock against the little green dude.
3: The fading of the window colour is kinda lame.

I'm giving it a tentative 2.5 out of 5 ... It's kinda sucky but I'm sure I will adapt :P